Images of Michael Jordan's sublimeness on the basketball will be forever stamped into Amerca's consciousness. An SI writer who covered Jordan for most of his NBA career remembers the greatest player in history as a joy to watch, a careful cultivator of his own image and, often, a down-to-earth guy

Pussycats No More After decades of mediocrity (or worse), the Princeton Tigers are in the Top 10

The long, dark Russian winter of Princeton hockey has come to anend. How long? How dark? Well, the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reaganand Bush presidencies came and went without Princeton hockey'shaving so much as a .500 season. But the 1998-99 Tigers are catsof a different stripe. Halfway through the season Princeton is11-4-1, ranked eighth in the country and tied for second in theEastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) with a 7-2-1 record.

"Guys are sick of the talk about the past," says Princeton'sco-captain and leading scorer, Jeff Halpern, a senior fromPotomac, Md., who is a candidate for the Hobey Baker Award, givento the nation's top collegiate player. (Baker, class of '14, ledthe Tigers to a 27-7 record over his three-year career, duringthe golden era of Princeton hockey.) "My freshman year, guys justwanted to get to the middle of the pack," Halpern says. "Now ourgoals are different. We can't be compared yet to the elite teamsin the country who do it year in and year out, but on any givennight we can beat any of those guys."

The Tigers proved that last March when, after struggling to a7-9-6 regular-season record in the ECAC, they knocked off Brown,Cornell, Yale and Clarkson in the span of six days to win theleague tournament and their first ECAC championship. That earnedPrinceton its first invitation to the NCAA tournament, in whichthe Tigers put a scare into eventual champion Michigan, losing2-1 on the Wolverines' home ice in the semifinals. "On ESPN theywere joking about sending the Tigers into the lions' den, havingto play Michigan at Michigan," says All-America senior SteveShirreffs, Princeton's top defender and a ninth-round draftchoice of the Calgary Flames in 1995 (he put off an NHL career tofinish college), "but there's really not much of a talent gapbetween us and the top teams."

Traditional hockey powers such as Boston University, Clarkson,Harvard and Minnesota can attest to that; all of them have lostto Princeton this season. But Tigers coach Don (Toot) Cahoon, theman responsible for turning the Princeton program around, isquick to wave a flag of caution. "Athletically, even now, we'rejust a little above the middle of the pack," he says. "So to getto the top, it's a question of doing the little things right. Theplayers understand that the whole has to be greater than the sumof its parts. These kids are motivated. That's what got them toPrinceton. We're very disciplined in areas where some other teamsbreak down."

Cahoon, 49, a self-described overachiever, makes the Energizerbunny look indolent. A carbonated bubble of a man, he doesn'twalk from place to place, he scoots. He came to Princeton in 1991from BU, where he had played on two national championship teamsand helped coach a third. At that point the Tigers had had onewinning season in the previous 30 years. "He brought with himinstant credibility--and a game plan," says Princeton assistantcoach Len Quesnelle, a former Tigers player who had been on thecoaching staff before Cahoon arrived. "When he said, 'I want youguys to follow this weight training program because I know it'swhat BU is doing,' the players bought into it right away."

"We didn't have to turn this thing around all at once," saysCahoon, who was undeterred by the conventional wisdom thatPrinceton had two strikes against it when it came to recruiting:It's one of the southernmost hockey-playing schools in DivisionI, and, like all the Ivies, it doesn't give athleticscholarships. "I asked myself, Why couldn't we find five or sixkids a year who would cherish the opportunity to play at auniversity the caliber of Princeton? We never put the focus onwinning. It was, Are we getting better? It's simplistic, but ittakes the burden off the players."

From the start Cahoon preached nutrition and off-iceconditioning: Before every season he requires his players to beable to run eight consecutive 200-yard dashes, each in under 31seconds, resting for 90 seconds in between. They also must beable to run five miles in under 35 minutes. "A lot of peoplewould argue that those requirements have no basis for developinga hockey player," Cahoon says, "but they're a great basis fordeveloping the mind."

To discourage postgame Saturday night carousing, Cahoon holdsSunday practices, giving the players Monday off instead. "Thatserves a dual purpose," he notes. "It also lets them get anacademic head start on their workweek."

It wasn't until Cahoon's fourth season, 1994-95, that the Tigersshowed signs of turning the corner. That season Princeton knockedoff the top-ranked team in the country, Maine, went on to win aschool-record 18 games and advanced to the ECAC finals for thefirst time.

The success of that team helped Cahoon recruit the nine seniorswho are the heart of this year's lineup. "Coach convinced me itwas almost an honor to be part of bringing Princeton out of itshistorical trap," says co-captain Syl Apps, who scored thegame-winning goal in last year's ECAC title game in doubleovertime and whose father and grandfather both played in the NHL."Every year since he's been here, the program has gone forward.We have a higher caliber of athlete now than we did my freshmanyear, and when you practice against those guys every day, itcan't help but lift the level of your play."

In the manner of the late, great Wisconsin and PittsburghPenguins coach Bob Johnson, Cahoon has dozens of spiral notebooksin his office detailing practices of the national teams ofSweden, Austria, France, Poland and Russia, among others. He's afaithful subscriber to a coaching manual called The Drill of theWeek Club and prides himself on introducing five or six drills aweek that he has never tried. "Some of them are terrible," hesays with a laugh. "Players are running into each other. Butthat's the fun of coaching. You try to keep the kids thinking.I'm a product of my own insecurity. I don't know anything else Ido with the same level of competence as coach. That's what drivesmy passion. I don't want to lose the thing I do best."

Which is why, the day after a 4-2 loss on Jan. 8 to a lesstalented but more determined Dartmouth team, Cahoon did somethinghe'd never done: He kept the Tigers at the rink for more thanthree hours, even though they had a game that night againstVermont. He made them watch a video of the debacle againstDartmouth, walked them through situations on the ice, talked tothem collectively and individually. His message? Your time hereis short. The games are few. Don't waste a single shift. "I toldthem to give me something to work with, because the one thing Ican't coach is lack of effort," Cahoon says. "I asked them to letme take them to a place they might not ordinarily think theycould go. It's corny, but that's me. I'm very comfortable showingthese guys exactly who I am."

The Tigers responded with one of their best games of the season,a 3-2 win over the gritty Catamounts that ended a two-game losingstreak. Freshman goaltender Dave Stathos, of Longueuil, Que.,improved his record to 6-1-1, solidifying a position that was aquestion mark coming into the season, following the graduation ofErasmo Saltarelli. This Princeton team, like the BU squads Cahoonplayed for and coached, is fundamentally a defensive,counterpunching club. Its offense is generated by forecheckingand neutral-zone turnovers, so it can't play run-and-gun.

"We're beginning to understand our identity," says Halpern. "Wecan't go out and expect our talent to win games. We've got to hitand shove and win the battles along the boards, and let our skillplayers score some big goals. It's that kind of play that willtake us as far as I think we can go."

They've already come one frozen hell of a long way.

COLOR PHOTO: LOU CAPOZZOLA "Guys are sick of the talk of the past," says Halpern (right), the Tigers' leading scorer. [Jeff Halpern in game]

Before he became the premier postseason performer of his generation, the Patriots icon was a middling college quarterback who invited skepticism, even scorn, from fans and his coaches. That was all—and that was everything